Issac Theatre Royal Plaster Restoration

I love this blog, I really do. And part of the reason why I love it, is because it connects me with all sorts of people, all over the world, doing cool stuff. I was driving down the highway one day, and my phone rang, and this guy said “Hello there, my name is Corin, I live in New Zealand and I really like your blog.” Corin does really cool stuff. Like build de Havilland Mosquitos from scratch. Not models of de Havilland Mosquitos. de Havilland Mosquitos. Like the kind you fly in. Really. If you’re on Facebook you can check out their page here. Corin and I ended up talking on Skype fairly regularly, and he was really interested in the EXAscan. I did my best to sell myself as a traveling laser scanning service- “It’s just one flight from San Francisco to Auckland!” but ultimately, Corin decided to get his own EXAscan. A few weeks ago he called me up and asked if I thought I could do some T-Splines models of ornate plaster work. “Sure,” I said, “seems like a reasonable thing.” The Issac Theatre Royal in Christchurch, New Zealand had been damaged during the earthquake, and they needed some way to repair the ornate plaster work that is all over the interior. So, last week Corin sent me a laser scan of a test panel to be rebuilt in T-Splines, so that he could machine a panel. The client just wanted to see if it was technically feasible to do. So, I did a quick rebuild of the center of the panel in T-Splines, and sent it back over the pond to Corin. Here’s a screen shot of the scanned data:

And here’s my T-Spline rebuild of it:

Today, Corin sent me some pics of the machined test panel:

It’s amazing to me how little geography matters these days in design. With Skype and the internet, I can collaborate with people all over the world on cool stuff like this. We’ll see what happens with this – I really like doing tricky stuff like this – the whole idea of replicating in T-Splines some amazing craftsmanship that was done in the early 1900’s is just too cool, in my book.

yes, I only use the best aircraft spruce for clamps, nothing else cuts the mustard! There is vacuum holding the piece down as well, but the edge curl abit when I removed that much material, hence the wood and brad gun, problem solved!